The droplets were constantly cutting the sky, constantly without even a small hiatus. The flashes of lighting illuminating my bedroom every next minute were followed by deafening crushes of thunder. A gloomy mind filled with nothingness is not that good at generating any pleasant thought, I guess. The sound of rain, the flashing lights, the thunder storms, the non-uniform noise of ceiling fan blowing with changing speed with fluctuating voltage every minute caused intense disturbance to me.
'Why the hell this nature is screaming like an ill mannered school kid tonight! I can't sleep properly. Is it trying to convey some sad message to me!'
Something was there that night, something unnatural, something strange, something anomaly, constantly wanted me to stay awake all night. I sat up, folding my legs against my chest. The bedside window was wide open. I fixed my eyes at the thicket in the backyard. Behind the thicket I tried to discover the small buildings owned by some middle class villagers. Beyond that, a tall temple peak adorned with saffron flag comes in sight. Beyond that, the infinite horizon surrounded with small grayish hills block the eyes to extend its sight any further. A dreadful darkness engulfed entire place. It engulfed the trees and bushes in backyard, the colorful buildings, the temple peak, the horizon and the hills. I couldn't find any of them, no sign of their existence. Just the strings of light rolling across the dark sky disturbed the stillness.
Somehow I felt, all of them are sleeping. The thicket, the half-pitched street, the temple peak, the horizon all are sleeping peacefully. 'Am I the only creature who can't rest her eyes in sleep tonight? Do they breath while sleeping! As my grandma used to breath, sleeping next to me in our apartment. Often I used to listen her breathing. It was a sound soaked with peace and calmness without any noise.'How can you all sleep so peacefully? How can you, especially when she is struggling downstairs to make her lungs function smoothly for her. She is so much in pain. So much that she refused to open her eyes, to have a sip of water in last one week, to offer a single normal response of human organ.'
It was too difficult to look at my Grandma in her very last week spend on this earth, with all of us, with me. Lying on her water bed and fighting hard against all the bed sores eating her body up slowly, she lost all the shines and radiance she used to emit through her skin, making her gorgeously and naturally beautiful even at her ancient age. She didn't meet her gaze with me when I called her loud shaking her body, she didn't throw her lovely and infectious smile at me when I sat next to her and told, I left all my work behind and came just to see you, she didn't squeeze me tight, she didn't kiss my forehead as she always used to do earlier, on my return from hostel. She didn't prepare my most favorite omelet with capsicum, carrot and onion toppings, scrambled eggs and jhal muri even after knowing I die everyday to treat myself with all those delicacies.The only thing she did was, she breathed and breathed upon draining all her energy out.
According to medical science, due to aging her arteries got thickened, hampering proper blood circulation to her brain. As a consequence she had a brain stroke. For the doctors it is quite natural at the age of ninety four to go through a slow brain death. It is natural they told. 'Natural'; really? How can it be natural? It was not natural at all for me. It was entirely unnatural that her brain was so dead that it neither recognized me nor responded to me ; me who was dearest to her heart, whom she brought up in her arms, whom she fed cerelac, whom she made all ready for school on time with different hair styles everyday, whom she read Ramayana and Mahabharata and Jataka Tales a thousand times. Now medical practitioners say its 'Natural'.
The bedroom was soaked with pin drop silence that time. That same doe-eyed, lovely ancient face smiled at me finally and then slipped behind the darkness. What a deadly smile she wore. I desperately wanted to see that face once again. She was always very much liberal to all my unfair demands and never complained. Again that face emerged to surface, smiled and this time nodded her head slightly and disappeared again.
I woke up in the early morning as my mom shook me; 'Come downstairs, grandma is no more, I think. We can't sense her pulse. The doctor is on his way'. I rushed to her, she was lying on her water bed exactly in the same posture I saw her last night. The vanished shines and radiance were back on her face, on her entire body. She had an amazing gold-like complexion, which is quite unnatural in Bengali genes. None of us in my family inherited that complexion through gene. There was no sign of pain, no sign of suffering in her lifeless body. It seemed like she is having a peaceful sleep, as she slept next to me in our apartment for long twenty five years in her life.
She always wanted me to be a doctor. But as I didn't find any strong love for biological science I couldn't make her dream true. But when she came to know that I enrolled for PhD in chemistry and eventually it would prefix my name with a Dr. she was satisfied. But it is too late now for her to see me as Dr. Saheli Bera.
Seeing me as a bride knotted with wedlock was her another wish she had cherished long. She always loved to see me in pink and violet shades. 'The Pink', 'The Violet' and 'The Purple' are those three shades, that Almighty has created to brighten my aura, she used to tell. May be in a couple of years or three I would be dressed in pink or violet or purple wedding saree. But that would be too late for her to see me that way.
It is too late for many such things for her, for me, for all of us. But being a science educated person, I believe in reincarnation as science believes in 'Energy conservation laws'. May be I will get that soul back once again in my life, to repeat the next cycle of life, to stage the next drama of life.
May be that day both of us would come to realize that 'Its Never Too Late'.
'This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’
